Sony S350 question regarding BD Live
 

I posted this in the HD forum but didn't get any response. I figure this is probably a better place for it.

Yes. Just buy a Sony MiniDrive (looks like a memory card) or a Flashdrive and stick it in the back of the unit...and leave it there. You will be 2.0 compliant and BD-Live should work fine. BD-Live only requires 1GB (flashdrives are about $10 or so) but you can go higher if you have an extra one laying around.

I've never heard of a player going slower by leaving it in (or even having it at all). Make sure you have updated your firmware to the latest version to take advantage of BD-Live as most in stores may still have an older, 1.1 firmware.

The manual recommends using a Sony USM1GH but I just put a Kingston one in mine for around $8. If you use your own brand, make sure it fits in the slot properly... it's tiny and slim too.

Thanks for the responses. I'll check the firmware when I get home to see if its 2.0 but I did run an update before I tried using BD-Live. And as I mentioned, the loading time increased significantly versus not having the USB drive plugged in. Could something be wrong with my player?

I have no idea.

Are you telling me it took longer to load a title or ir loaded faster? Faster makes a bit more sense....but were you timing it? Using the same title (A Fox title may talk longer to load then lets say a Sony).

Yeah, my wife picked up a USB flash drive when she bought the player and it was too wide to fit in that little opening. So we had to exchange it for a thinner one. I ended up getting a PNY 2GB (it was on sale and came in a 2-pack). It fits fine and the firmware update appears to have been successful. However, I haven't tried using BD-Live yet. I guess I'll know for sure when I try it.

I haven't noticed an increase in load time since connecting the flash drive.

On a somewhat related note... As for general load times, I don't quite now what a lot of people are crying about. True, it takes a little longer for BD to load than a DVD does, but some people made it sound like they are going gray sitting there waiting. I was half expecting to put the disc in and go take a nap or something while it loaded. In the defense of the OP, it sounds like he/she might have some other problem since it only increases when the flash drive is connected.

Cool! I just noticed that this post is #777 for me!

The S350 is Sony's third generation player...so loads times have been fixed somewhat. Earlier models take a lot longer.

Well that's good to know. I'm usually the one stuck with the older version of anything. My first DVD player wouldn't play CD-Rs.

No, I was not timing it, but it took long enough that it most certainly was longer. To be clear, the SAME BD (Transformers) takes a LOT longer to load when the flash drive is connected versus when it is not connected.

I'm not sure about this. Maybe someone else can chime in on my theory. But it's been said that BD-Live can cause some load times to be longer (I remember the Iron Man fiasco for one example). Maybe if you don't have the flash drive in, the BD-Live features don't load, but when you have it in, the BD-Live features load. Just a theory, though.

Sounds like a safe theory to me. I think it is a sound design choice to only load features that the player can support. Why make people wait for features they can't use?

You might be right. It may pre-load some of the 1.1 features onto the flash drive while the disc is loading to make it "load" faster later. I've never really paid too much attention to load times though...as long as its not 5 minutes I'm fine.

My Sony 550 loads rather quickly almost every title. But I did notice it seemed to take a bit longer on The Dark Knight.

This comment got me wondering about something...

Does the flash drive store any kind of "cookies" when you load a disc so when you come back to that disc some other time, it loads faster?

Or is it more like a DVD player where nothing from the disc is actually saved on a drive within the player?

I'm glad the jedi agree :).